Thursday, April 12, 2012

Old Shatter Comes Out of Retirement, Gets Butt Kicked

Well, it’s certainly been a
long time since I’ve played 40k and if this game is anything to show for it, I
am out of practice. It was rather a quick decision to play 40k last night. As
usual, our little Wednesday night gaming group got together, yet this week only
3 of us showed up, and threw down on some 40k instead of Infinity this time.
With little time to spare, we drew up two 1,000 point lists.

In about 5-minutes, I pointed
up an army though I’m now to even sure it was 1,000 points. I think I was about
25 point shy. Anyhow, I built up the usual defense structure of kroot and
piranha while building in as many guns as I could. My list had very few
upgrades and I’m sad to this say this meant nearly everything was BS3 and
relying on being twin-linked to hit anything.

My opponent, good friend Lo Pan from Remote Presence, broke out his Ultramarines and pointed up a list that included Sicarius, a couple razorbacks, a predator, some landspeeders and a vindicator.

My forces deploy, totally forgetting the deployment strategies I've laid out on this blog, and in a thinly spread and weak skirmish line. But of course this wouldn't matter as I am deploying first right?

The beakies from ULtramar set up in a refused flank, bunched up and ready to assault me on a flank - duh! Of course they would, have you learned nothing in all your years of campaigning, Old Shatter Hands!

Ignoring this as a potential blunder, Old Shatter Hands inspires the troops and assures them that with first turn, we'll have time to reshuffle the line into something more sensible.

But OH SNAP! Captian Sicarius has seized the initiative! Not only that, but he's giving one squad scout! The Space Marines are upon us on turn 1!

The even the best defenses of the Tau cannot turn the tide, especially with BS3, poor Leadership scores and wonky dice rolling. Not only that but my fearsome broadsides must have had dust in their lenses, as they missed their shots nearly 75% of the time!

The right flank rushes to their aid but it is too late - the men of Ultramar have crushed the Tau Expansion force! Old Shatter Hands retreats!

What a fun game! Honestly, I had a blast playing this. My buddy, Lo Pan, has a beautiful army and a good spirit. Even at 1000 points the game took about 2 hours which reminded me just how slow 40k is. I'm excited about gaming again though, I just hope there is a new Codex out soon. I am really sick of low Leadership and poor BS across the Tau army - seems like the army performs well enough, but is rather wonky at times. It's almost as if you need to dish out the upgrades for anything to be any good at what they do.

I'm also noticing that my army needs a ton of maintenance. There are broken aerials here and there, some areas that need to get re-painted and some unfinished models here and there.

Hopefully I get this army out more often than once a year here on out...we'll see.

By the way, I will be at Adepticon next week - super psyched for a killer mancation! I'll be lugging around my Infinity stuff and would be willing to show any of my fellow bloggers how to play the game. This is me on the left. Say hi!

Alas, I fear I will suffer the same fate when I finally get around to playing a 40k game here in Slovakia.

The Deathwing have had a pretty good run of gaming in their total history winning three out of four games I've played with them....or is it two out of three? In any case, I'm very rusty as far as gaming goes.

Glad to hear that you had a good game though and brought the cadre out to play again.

Tim, we need Tau of War hats or something so that we can be easily recognized by your fanbase! BTW I am the guy on the right and will also be at Adepticon. For some reason, I've decided that my foot guard list will be "fun" to play at the GT and Gladiator so if you see me during the weekend I will definitely need some emotional support and perhaps a shot of something high octane.

As a fairly active spectator in the aforementioned 1000 point game it was definitely fun to watch and helped Lo Pan get a much needed 40k refresher (me too for that matter).

LP will be playing in the 40k Friendly Tournament which unironically has asked him to play any imperial force EXCEPT Grey Knights... gee I wonder why :)

Thanks for a lot of inspiration. I've got my self a 2000 pts tau army now. And it is very much inspired by your know how with tau tactics. Its fun playing, and I've learned that anything close to a draw with a tau army is a win. I've played against most armies now exept necrons and tyranids. And won once over orcs and a draw against eldar. But I still enjoy taking them to the battlefield event though i have a large Chaos army which I know have a bigger chance of winning. Terje, Norway